Catena di Villorba, April 2010. What would your eyes miss if they had never seen the bright orange sun as it sinks below the horizon? How would your children feel if they had never played and tumbled along the seashore? And if you'd never tasted the tang of salt on your skin?
For its 77^th issue COLORS helped to create a small revolution in the lives of eight people across the globe who never had the privilege of getting to know this mysterious environment full of wonders, this habitat of amazing creatures, this space that conceals ancient cities: the sea. People like Mingmar Sherpa, a 36-year-old Nepalese translator, who was translating a passage in the Bible about the Apostle Paul's boat journey from Rome to Jerusalem when he realized that the Sherpa language had no word for ‘sea’, nor for any terms connected with the sea. Or Madan Yadav, 35, from Delhi: a fishmonger who had never seen the sea. Or Banele, a 16-year-old South African girl, whom COLORS accompanied to the shores of the Indian Ocean so she could fulfil her long-held dream of being baptized.  These tiny, magic moments - microcosms of a wider exploration into the importance of protecting our seas – are also available in augmented reality (AR), which expands the magazine experience by ‘plunging’ the reader into a world that mixes reality with that which is virtual.

COLORS 77 is about the sea and its relationship with human beings. Stories of dreams and exploitation, of freedom and confinement, of natural disasters and environmental protection. From a community of Korean fisherwomen who fish sustainably to Bolivia which despite being a landlocked country has a navy forced to hold navigational courses on Lake Titicaca. From traces left by emigrants seeking a better life to a group of Nicaraguan fisherman who catch the cocaine that drug smugglers drop in the sea to an introspective journey into the lives of the Inuit, a population which still lives in harmony with nature but whose destiny is, regrettably, uncertain.

The man who gave us the first descriptions of people’s relationship with marine environments, the filmmaker, documentarian, journalist, writer and, above all, traveller Folco Quilici wrote the forward for this issue.

The sea is also explored through the forays of Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd and one of the leading exponents of the environmental and animal rights movements, and the American activists Shark Angels. These ‘guardian angels’ work to protect sharks, an endangered species that the public has always considered dangerous, from being tortured and killed. In reality, sharks play an important predatory role in the oceans’ ecosystem.

COLORS 77 – THE SEA

At newsagents and in bookshops from May 2010 in three bilingual editions (English + Italian, French or Spanish).

Also available every day on our interactive website:http://www.colorsmagazine.com/

Coinciding with the Italian market launch of iPad, Colors is throwing open the doors to a new era in publishing: the first issue of the magazine, which sold out years ago, will in fact be available to all those who liked it or have heard about it. A little girl being born symbolically represented the dramatic arrival of a new magazine on the publishing scene: Colors n° 1 marked the start of an adventure, somewhere between journalistic reporting and revolutionary graphics, introducing a new way of communicating via a magazine. Colors n° 1 will be the first of a series of issues downloadable from the Apple Store from May 2010.